HIGH SCHOOL INFLUENCES
These first two weeks of college have already been eye opening for me. I’m realizing that my high school experience was very different than other students’. I decided to stay at my charter school for high school instead of going back to public school, and it was the best decision I made. For starters, it was tiny; I graduated as one of sixty-six students, and we were the biggest class the school had seen. Like everything in life, this had advantages and disadvantages. Very rarely was there drama or fighting, but since everyone knew everyone, drama spread quickly. Personally, I loved the small size, because to me it felt more like a community of learners than a school. One major part of a 'typical' high school experience I got to miss was the drama of clicks. Since the school was so small, most students took part in multiple activities. For example, someone could be a top scorer for the soccer team in the fall and then star in one of our theater productions in the winter, and it was because of this that my school felt so accepting.
Sports made my high school experience memorable and enjoyable. Because my school was so small, anyone who had prior sports experiences was looked up to for guidance. Joining the girls' soccer team as a freshman, I had 10 years of town soccer under my belt. I quickly became known on the field, and before I knew it I was being trained as a backup sweeper (the last defender, the one who controls all the defense). My sophomore year I became captain, and I strove to improve my relationship with my teammates and our performance on the field. But the real magic started with the last game of junior year, when I had my first asthma attack on the field. With no substitutes, I had to stay on the field so that my team wouldn't forfeit, but I couldn't play reliably at sweeper. My coach moved me to center forward, and told me to run as fast and as hard as I could whenever I got the ball, and then to take time to breathe after. As we accepted our loss, my coach decided that next season I would be playing center forward. My senior year of soccer was better than I ever could have dreamed it to be. Throughout the season, I scored 18 goals in 18 games, a new school record. Because of our small size, none of our school sports team usually made it to playoffs, but somehow my team managed to pull it off. Just making playoffs was an honor for us, even though we knew we had no chance of winning our first game. Although we were playing better than I had ever seen us play before, at halftime the score was already 6-0, and spirits were sinking. My coach told me to just shoot the ball the next time we started with it at the half, because the keeper was really far out of goal. Low and behold I scored my 18th goal from half field, and was the first athlete, boy or girl, to score a playoff goal from my school. It was a dream come true.
I played other sports at school as well, and the two biggest things I learned from participating were how to be a respectful athlete and how to be an asset to the team. My school was huge on sportsmanship... it wasn't the officials we were scared of for badmouthing the other team, it was our coaches. My idea of being an athlete includes respecting myself, my teammates, and also the other team, which I'm realizing now is pretty rare. I also came to understand that teams are made of different parts, and that, like a machine, each part has a job to do. Sometimes my job was significant, like being a captain, but other times my job was just to run workouts at track, and help the middle schoolers understand what to do as well. I will never forget the sense of community high school sports brought to my school, and how athletics wasn't just about being the MVP on the field, it was about being the MVP off the field too.
One thing that made my school unique was its stand on project-based education. I didn’t realize until I came to college how many students learn just to take tests. At my high school, we learned to apply our knowledge to projects, which created a radically different mindset for me. I had to take small quizzes on occasion, but for most classes I could expect anywhere between one and eight projects a semester. This idea of application of knowledge came across in all of my classes, especially math. In Calculus II senior year, we were deep into learning about integration and solids of revolution, so my math teacher had us design a staircase baluster using equations that we then revolved to make solid. It was projects like this that made me value what I learned in class in terms of the real world. A lot of the time I felt like there wasn’t anything we learned in school that wouldn’t be practical to know in real life.
One class that forever changed my view of the world was Earth and Space Science. I took the class senior year, and I wish I had taken it sooner. Almost everything in the course was hands-on; we studied river systems and glacial features by taking field trips to local arboretums, we did a comparison of Mars to Earth using Google Earth, and we researched the delicate coastal processes of our area by doing a case study of Plum Island. Earth and Space science taught me to question everything, to learn from others, and to continue looking back as I look forward. We would frequently use past experiments to create hypotheses about the real world, which created an atmosphere of growth and reflection. This is an idea that most other high schools don’t foster, opting for more of a test-and-go strategy. The curriculum of Earth and Space Science also encouraged me to recall information from other courses, like calculus, chemistry and biology. I was asked to make connections between the unit we were doing and things I had learned about in the past, to strengthen my understanding of the topic.
Another aspect of my school that I feel was crucial to for me was its emphasis on presentations. For almost every single project I did in school, I had to present my findings to either my classmates or a larger audience. This started in fifth grade at the middle school, and ended with my senior project, which I presented to an audience of 50. My presentation skills did not develop overnight; the more I presented in school, the more comfortable I was talking to people. Were I to choose the most important skill my school taught me, it would be communication. Understanding your audience, your material and speaking with a presence are all parts of making a presentation great. But these also helped me meet new people on the first couple of days I was here at URI. I had no problem walking up to new people and introducing myself, because I had done it so many times before at school, in a much more formal setting.
Overall, I think my high school set me up with a determination to succeed through effort, an appreciation of knowledge, and a network of friends and teachers that will always be here for me.
These first two weeks of college have already been eye opening for me. I’m realizing that my high school experience was very different than other students’. I decided to stay at my charter school for high school instead of going back to public school, and it was the best decision I made. For starters, it was tiny; I graduated as one of sixty-six students, and we were the biggest class the school had seen. Like everything in life, this had advantages and disadvantages. Very rarely was there drama or fighting, but since everyone knew everyone, drama spread quickly. Personally, I loved the small size, because to me it felt more like a community of learners than a school. One major part of a 'typical' high school experience I got to miss was the drama of clicks. Since the school was so small, most students took part in multiple activities. For example, someone could be a top scorer for the soccer team in the fall and then star in one of our theater productions in the winter, and it was because of this that my school felt so accepting.
Sports made my high school experience memorable and enjoyable. Because my school was so small, anyone who had prior sports experiences was looked up to for guidance. Joining the girls' soccer team as a freshman, I had 10 years of town soccer under my belt. I quickly became known on the field, and before I knew it I was being trained as a backup sweeper (the last defender, the one who controls all the defense). My sophomore year I became captain, and I strove to improve my relationship with my teammates and our performance on the field. But the real magic started with the last game of junior year, when I had my first asthma attack on the field. With no substitutes, I had to stay on the field so that my team wouldn't forfeit, but I couldn't play reliably at sweeper. My coach moved me to center forward, and told me to run as fast and as hard as I could whenever I got the ball, and then to take time to breathe after. As we accepted our loss, my coach decided that next season I would be playing center forward. My senior year of soccer was better than I ever could have dreamed it to be. Throughout the season, I scored 18 goals in 18 games, a new school record. Because of our small size, none of our school sports team usually made it to playoffs, but somehow my team managed to pull it off. Just making playoffs was an honor for us, even though we knew we had no chance of winning our first game. Although we were playing better than I had ever seen us play before, at halftime the score was already 6-0, and spirits were sinking. My coach told me to just shoot the ball the next time we started with it at the half, because the keeper was really far out of goal. Low and behold I scored my 18th goal from half field, and was the first athlete, boy or girl, to score a playoff goal from my school. It was a dream come true.
I played other sports at school as well, and the two biggest things I learned from participating were how to be a respectful athlete and how to be an asset to the team. My school was huge on sportsmanship... it wasn't the officials we were scared of for badmouthing the other team, it was our coaches. My idea of being an athlete includes respecting myself, my teammates, and also the other team, which I'm realizing now is pretty rare. I also came to understand that teams are made of different parts, and that, like a machine, each part has a job to do. Sometimes my job was significant, like being a captain, but other times my job was just to run workouts at track, and help the middle schoolers understand what to do as well. I will never forget the sense of community high school sports brought to my school, and how athletics wasn't just about being the MVP on the field, it was about being the MVP off the field too.
One thing that made my school unique was its stand on project-based education. I didn’t realize until I came to college how many students learn just to take tests. At my high school, we learned to apply our knowledge to projects, which created a radically different mindset for me. I had to take small quizzes on occasion, but for most classes I could expect anywhere between one and eight projects a semester. This idea of application of knowledge came across in all of my classes, especially math. In Calculus II senior year, we were deep into learning about integration and solids of revolution, so my math teacher had us design a staircase baluster using equations that we then revolved to make solid. It was projects like this that made me value what I learned in class in terms of the real world. A lot of the time I felt like there wasn’t anything we learned in school that wouldn’t be practical to know in real life.
One class that forever changed my view of the world was Earth and Space Science. I took the class senior year, and I wish I had taken it sooner. Almost everything in the course was hands-on; we studied river systems and glacial features by taking field trips to local arboretums, we did a comparison of Mars to Earth using Google Earth, and we researched the delicate coastal processes of our area by doing a case study of Plum Island. Earth and Space science taught me to question everything, to learn from others, and to continue looking back as I look forward. We would frequently use past experiments to create hypotheses about the real world, which created an atmosphere of growth and reflection. This is an idea that most other high schools don’t foster, opting for more of a test-and-go strategy. The curriculum of Earth and Space Science also encouraged me to recall information from other courses, like calculus, chemistry and biology. I was asked to make connections between the unit we were doing and things I had learned about in the past, to strengthen my understanding of the topic.
Another aspect of my school that I feel was crucial to for me was its emphasis on presentations. For almost every single project I did in school, I had to present my findings to either my classmates or a larger audience. This started in fifth grade at the middle school, and ended with my senior project, which I presented to an audience of 50. My presentation skills did not develop overnight; the more I presented in school, the more comfortable I was talking to people. Were I to choose the most important skill my school taught me, it would be communication. Understanding your audience, your material and speaking with a presence are all parts of making a presentation great. But these also helped me meet new people on the first couple of days I was here at URI. I had no problem walking up to new people and introducing myself, because I had done it so many times before at school, in a much more formal setting.
Overall, I think my high school set me up with a determination to succeed through effort, an appreciation of knowledge, and a network of friends and teachers that will always be here for me.